Caturday: just a quick blurb.

Birch is pretty affectionate, as far as cats go.  He likes to lie next to me (or sometimes in my lap, but only when he wants to, not if I put him there) and will generally submit to being picked up/cuddled/smooched for a few moments before he starts to struggle.

Last night, however, was unprecedented: he fell asleep with the side of his face literally mashed against my mouth and nose.

I was flattered, and his face smelled okay, so I let him remain there.  He stayed for hours. It was epic.

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Love kitties?  Click here to see all the cat paintings currently for sale in my Artfire store!

My Artfire store now has 50 items!

...And I still have a bunch more paintings yet to list, if you can believe that!  I've been busy since I quit my day job back in April. :)

The latest piece I've uploaded to my store is a tribute to my friends in the LGBT community:

Click here for the full listing!

Pink!  Glitter!  Rainbow colours!  There's so much fabulousness here that it practically explodes out of the canvas and hits you in the eye (and I heard that can really sting, so be careful!).  Plus, at a mere 4"x4" in size, this painting can add flamboyance to even the tiniest apartment nook - whether it's the wall above your feather boa collection or that little empty bit of shelf space next to your Indigo Girls CD box set.

And until December 31st, you can enter the code SHESAIDPOPBLOG at checkout to get 15% off!  (Not just off this particular painting; I mean 15% off your entire first purchase from my store, no matter what you buy or how much you spend.)  Huzzah!

Dumb girl is DUMB.

My most recent painting on Artfire has gotten a lot of views already - more views than can be accounted for by my blog, Facebook, and Twitter marketing efforts, I think - and this made me wonder if the painting could possibly be showing up in searches already and people are finding it that way.

So I Googled "Uberwhore" to see if the painting would come up.

No.  No, it did not.

And now I see glowing afterimages of penises every time I blink.

I've just listed my 49th item on Artfire...and it is scandalous!

Ever since I was a kid, I've loved the little descriptive names that companies give to makeup shades (also paint shades and ice cream flavours).  The names are so evocative; they conjure up emotions or sensations or sometimes even create a whole new persona for you to put on along with the makeup.   

The only problem is that makeup names are often too subtle.  A lipstick intended to make you feel sexy might be called "Vixen," for instance...and that's not bad, but I think it lacks a certain oomph.  So I stepped up and invented a lipstick that's goddamn seximafied and doesn't pull any punches.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the latest addition to my Artfire store:

Click here for the full listing!

Hey, bright red lipstick is already associated with sex and seduction.  And this lipstick is really bright red, sooooo...

Oh, and by the way, you know how most makeup ads or websites have a little descriptive blurb about each colour?  I did that, too:

Don't forget that you can use the coupon code SHESAIDPOPBLOG at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase!  Only until December 31st, though; after that the code expires forever and I don't know when I'll make a similar offer again.  Feel free to pass that code along to family and friends so that they, too, can take advantage of these savings before the deadline!

Conversational Snippet #17: Oh HA HA I just got that.

The Boy and I are watching Star Trek fan-made music videos on YouTube.


Boy: The cast of the original Trek must've gotten so many weird injuries over the course of the show...like, I know all the main actors have tintinitus now...


Me: "Tinnitus."  Tintinitus is the compulsion to plaster one's hair forward, leaving a cowlick at the front. How did they get tinnitus?


Boy: Because of all the explosions and stuff.  [Long pause]  ...Shut the fuck up.



By the way, if you understood my joke without having to click either of the links, we totally have to be best friends.  It's non-negotiable.  I'll be showing up at your house any minute now with gluten-free cookies and a bucket of Legos.


Okay, watch this now!




***


Have you checked out my Artfire store yet?  You totally should!  I have many original acrylic paintings that will tempt and delight your inner nerd.  And if you enter the code SHESAIDPOPBLOG at checkout you'll get 15% off your first purchase!  (Offer valid until December 31, 2011)

New item in my store: GLITTER BACON CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS!

First, I invented wall-mountable Glitter Bacon.  Then, the approaching holiday season inspired me and I adapted the design into tree-hangable Glitter Bacon!



Life-sized, realistic-looking bacon!  Copious amounts of superfine gold holographic microglitter!  Coordinating gold-coloured S-hooks for hanging!  Truly, these ornaments are the pinnacle of human achievement.  And if you enter the code SHESAIDPOPBLOG at checkout, you'll get a 15% discount on them!  Or on anything else in my Artfire store, for that matter.  But only 'til December 31st.

So, y'know, don't wait too long to start shopping. :D

Apparently, Sylar only makes waffles for the boys.

The Boy informed me via Facebook today that actor Zachary Quinto - famous to nerds everywhere for his roles in Heroes and the recent Star Trek movie - is gay.

The remarks about chicken noises and Chicken Ladies are a reference to some old Kids in the Hall comedy sketches, by the way. You can watch this video to fully understand the joke if you want to, but the gist is that the mental picture of Zachary Quinto gettin' it on with dudes is appealing to me, and The Boy knew it would be.  Finally: an indication that Zachary is doing the horizontal mambo with guys in real life and not just in my badly written Star Trek slash fiction*!

All lechery aside, I have to say that the closet is a terrible place to live and I'm genuinely happy to see Quinto come out and live a freer, more open life.  Maybe young, unhappy LGBT folks will be inspired by him (and other out-and-famous people, of course) and realize that it really does get better.


*I'm kidding!  I don't actually write bad Star Trek slashfic.  I write exquisite Star Trek slashfic.  Young Spock/Spock Prime anachronistic pseudo-twincest FTW!***

**I'm still kidding.  Nimoy is way too old to make my tribble purr.

*****

Pridebot approves of people coming out of the closet and bravely living the lives they were meant to live!  Please go visit Pridebot (and other robots!) in my Artfire store.  You can enter the code SHESAIDPOPBLOG at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase!  (Offer expires December 31, 2011).

p.s. I also carry life-sized paintings of waffles.

Angst on Parade!

Have I ever mentioned that The Boy is an artist?  It's true - he does amazing pen-and-ink drawings and has a few different comic book ideas in the works.  The fact that he "gets" my creative side is a big factor in our being together, for me.  Not the biggest factor - there are a million other reasons why I love him - but yeah, the art thing is pretty big for me.  And I'm pretty sure he feels the same way.

I go through periods of creative drought occasionally - times when I'm just not motivated to paint.  These droughts have been happening for my entire life, and they're always temporary, but every single time it throws me into a fatalistic tailspin: "Well, that's it, the gift is gone. I've used up all my ideas FOREVER.  Party's over.  Time to pack it in."  And then a few weeks later a new idea for a painting hits me and I get all excited and everything's good again.

Anyhoo, a while back I had a horrible epiphany: "Holy crap, if I ever do run out of ideas forever, The Boy might not want to be with me anymore!!!"  I mean...if art was a common interest and illuminating force that brought us together, and suddenly my light went out permanently...then what?

This line of thought made an image pop into my head, and I've finally gotten around to painting it:

See, this pretty faun is wondering whether her lover wants her or is simply drawn to the novelty of her being all supernatural and stuff.  Symbolism!

An amusing plot twist: the faun in the picture symbolizes me but looks like The Boy*, and the man in the picture symbolizes The Boy but is actually a masculinized version of me.  I based this whole composition on a photo I have of him lying on my chest.

I might pick at the painting a little more later - The Boy hasn't seen it yet and when he does he'll almost certainly have suggestions for tweaks** - but I think it's basically done, and I'm pretty happy with it.


*There is no possible way I could draw an elfin or faunlike creature and not base it on The Boy.  He has the market cornered on otherworldly beauty, srsly.

**This is the double-edged sword of living with a fellow artist.  I show him a new piece and he tilts his head and goes "Hmmmmm...." and then there's a moment of contemplative silence during which I kind of want to yell "JUST TELL ME IT'S GOOD DAMMIT."  But his suggestions are always excellent.

Two more ROBOT PAINTINGS now for sale!

You guys may remember me posting a pic of this painting a few months back for Pride Week...well, now it's officially for sale in my Artfire store!

Click here to go to the listing!

And then there's this adorable monkey-and-robot family portrait:

Click here to go to the listing!

The idea behind this one is that if humans came from monkeys, and robots come from us, then on some level* monkeys are kind of the "grandparents" of robots.  Don't try too hard to grasp this concept, it is very complimacated and scientific.  Instead, let's all notice how I put a little decorative propeller on the robot's head to indicate that it is a child.  D'awwwwwwwwww!!!!!

Can't get enough robots?  Click here to see all the robot paintings currently available in my store!  And don't forget, if you buy something by December 31, 2011, you can enter the code SHESAIDPOPBLOG at checkout to get 15% off your order!  Feel free to pass this code on to anyone else who might use it - the more the merrier. :)


* The "I had way too much sugar and was mildly hallucinating when I came up with this theory" level.

Cat Lesson #2: Sound and Fury.

I've known many cats in my lifetime, and each one has taught me something important about life, cats, or even myself!

And just the other day, Birchy taught me physics!  Now I know that his body transmits shock waves.  Possibly, it even amplifies them.

SCIENCE!

*****

My Artfire store has many original pop-art paintings of kitties, most of which reflect cat lessons I have learned (whether I've written about them here yet or not).  Click here to see all my cat paintings - and remember that if you enter the code SHESAIDPOPBLOG at checkout, you'll save 15% on your first purchase!  (Offer valid until December 31, 2011)

Robots and mermaids and DOS, oh my!

I've listed a new robot painting in my Artfire store!

It's a "merbot" - a mermaid/robot hybrid!  Isn't she beautiful? (Click here for the full listing.)

The caption along the merbot's side, "c:\creature", is a sort of double entendre that references the DOS operating system and the phrase "sea creature" at the same time.  Blame my dad for this - in my formative years (and well before Windows was invented), he worked as a computer programmer.  My squishy young mind absorbed the ambient nerdiness in our household like a sponge and I grew up to be the kind of person who makes DOS and BASIC puns, even though I've never worked as a software developer myself.

Anyhoo, if you love this painting, head on over to my store and buy it - or browse the 40+ other items I have for sale in case there's something you love even more!  And don't forget to enter the code SHESAIDPOPBLOG at checkout to get 15% off (offer valid until December 31, 2011).

THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!!!

Two summers ago, a junebug got into my apartment. I don't know how this exoskeletoned behemoth got in - seriously, it was at least the size of a helicopter and it's not like I have huge gaping holes in my walls - but it found a way.
So yeah...one moment I was sitting on the couch, minding my own business, and the next moment a junebug was zipping erratically back and forth through my living room like an airborne crackhead, casting a Mothra-sized shadow on the ceiling every time its flight path came near my table lamp.  I squealed in terror and hit the deck because I did not - under any circumstances - want to feel twelve pounds of chitin-wrapped bugmeat pelting full-force into the side of my face.  It was late and I had to work the next morning and I really didn't know what the hell to do* - there was no possible way I could ever get to sleep with that thing loose in the apartment.

Finally, the junebug's wonky trajectory took it into the bedroom, and I ran over and shut the door.  With the beast safely contained, I managed to doze fitfully on the couch until my cell phone alarm told me it was time to get up.

And then...I had to go into the bedroom to fetch some clean clothes.

I opened the door a crack.

I opened it two inches wider.

I flung the door all the way open and dropped into a defensive crouch, my mind hyperalert to any sign of danger, every muscle in my body poised for flight.

And...nothing happened.  The junebug didn't dive-bomb my head.  It didn't sneak out of the room and steal my wallet while I was searching for a matching pair of socks.  It had just...vanished.

You'd think that would be a happy ending to this story, but no.  Every now and then I'll be rooting around in one of my storage boxes or cleaning an out-of-the-way corner of the apartment, and I'll remember how I never actually found that junebug..  And I wonder if maybe it was really old, and crawled off someplace to die...someplace buried and obscure, like the nook I'm currently cleaning and/or ransacking.  And I wonder if its crunchy, leathery corpse is about to tumble onto my hand.

I still randomly freak myself out sometimes, thinking about this.  Did the junebug leave my apartment that night, or did it stay here and die?  And if it died, where the hell is it?

Maybe the cat found and ate it.  Yeah, let's go with that.


*I hadn't met The Boy yet, so there was nobody else there to rescue me.**

**And by "rescue" I mean "mock relentlessly and then maybe eventually kill the bug, provided it's not too much effort."

*****

That was a disturbing story.  Let's cleanse our palates with this adorable painting of a badass banana, currently available in my Artfire store!.  Save 15% by entering the code SHESAIDPOPBLOG at checkout!

Click here to see the full listing!

New ROBOT PAINTINGS in the store!

Now that my photography issues have been mostly sorted out, I've been adding more items to my Artfire store!  It's a time-consuming process (each painting requires a different promotional blurb and I'm a painstakingly anal-retentive writer), but I managed to add two new paintings today.  There's this one:

You can tell the robot is thinking, "DOES...NOT...COMPUTE!"

...and this one!

I call this robot The BDSMulator!

And there will be more robots coming soon!  OH YES THERE WILL BE MORE!  MUAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!

*cough*

Anyway, don't forget that if you enter the code SHESAIDPOPBLOG at checkout, you'll save 15% off your first purchase!  The offer expires on December 31st though so there's no time to waste!

Caturday: Well now one of you is gonna have to go change.

So, Birch is mostly white...but his tail is black.  And for some reason, his tail attaches to his butt in a perfect, symmetrical square shape.  Yup, that's right, his long, dangly tail emerges from a square of dark fur.  And one time -

Well, I'll just show you.

True story.

*****

Speaking of cats and general inappropriateness, check out this original 4"x6" painting you can buy in my Artfire store for just $24 USD:

...it's the perfect holiday gift for that one friend with the cat and the tendency to overshare!  I also sell many other pieces of original art that don't allude to masturbation, so there's truly something for everyone.  If you enter the code SHESAIDPOPBLOG at checkout, you'll save 15% on your first purchase - but only if you buy something before December 31st. So go browse!  Run, don't walk!

Another super-classy painting by yours truly.

A few days ago, my friend Izzy posted on Facebook that she'd just watched a butterfly land on her window...and poop on it.  Some of the responses indicated surprise or disbelief that butterflies poop, which struck me as rather silly.  We all know that butterfllies eat, after all, and the waste products have to come out somewhere.

I decided to remind people that just because a creature is pretty and delicate doesn't mean it's immune to the basic facts of biology.  And so, I painted this:

This painting hasn't been varnished yet but when I do I'm gonna add glitter to all the pink parts.  GLITTER, motherfuckers!  Yeah.

I also coined the phrase "butterflyarrhea" (butterfly + diarrhea) because according to Izzy, the poop was so liquid that it ran down the windowpane.  Butterflyarrhea would make such an awesome band name...and since I'm not a musician and Izzy already has a name for her band (which you should totally check out, btw, especially if you love gothy, ambient-type music), I guess that word is up for grabs!  If you form a band called "Butterflyarrhea," please let me know immediately so that I can squeal with joy and tell all my friends.  Thank you.

Oh, and here's a hilarious video that also explodes the "too pretty to have bodily functions" myth.  Every time I watch it, I laugh so hard my stomach hurts.  I hope it has that effect on you, too!



And I'm sure you already guessed this but yeah, I do act basically just like the chick in the video*.  Except I don't jog.


*Don't judge me!  You don't know what The Boy does back.  He is heinous, dude.  There are no words.

*****

If you enjoy art with a twisted sense of humour, you should probably check out my Artfire store!  Enter the code SHESAIDPOPBLOG at checkout to receive 15% off your first purchase (offer valid until December 31, 2011).